CfP: Causa sive ratio: causality and reason in modernity between metaphysics, epistemology and science, Milan, November 2017
Causa sive ratio: causality and reason in modernity between metaphysics, epistemology and science
Date and Location: 14-16 November 2017, Università degli Studi di Milano
Website: https://easychair.org
Description:
The
very advent of modernity in philosophy could be interpreted through the
lens of the fundamental redefinition of causality in the ontological,
epistemological and logical separation of cause from reason. From the
rejection of formal and final causes in the generation of Descartes and
Gassendi, the debates on these questions in the period of Hobbes,
Spinoza and Leibniz, to the phenomenalization of causation in Hume and
its subsequent idealization in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,
we can see the definitive conceptual separation between logical
implication, epistemic explanation and physical causation. It is this
historical conceptual transformation and its present consequences that
is the object of this conference.
What
does this separation between cause and reason mean for the role of
rationality, the property of intelligibility and the ontology of
grounding in the development of metaphysics and the foundations of
science in the 17th and 18th century? How do the
emergent concepts of the general laws of nature and universally
conserved physical magnitudes harmonize the rationality of nature and
the uniqueness of causes in a new cosmology? What becomes the status of
the self-caused? How does the early modern rejection of formal and final
causes return, in other guises, and transform the semantic content of
physical theories? How does the identity or distinction of reason and
cause continue to inform contemporary philosophy?
The
aim of this conference is to explore the distinction (and relation) of
cause and reason from a historical examination of early modern
philosophy and science while engaging with the contemporary debates
surrounding grounding, causation and scientific explanation. Aside from
paper presentations by invited and selected speakers, short reading
groups of primary source texts (relevant to the presentations) will be
led by conference organizers and invited speakers.
Confirmed
Invited speakers: Mcdonough, Jeffrey (Harvard U.), Brading, Katherine
(Duke U.), Breitenbach, Angela (Cambridge U.), Ott, Walter (U. of
Virginia), Lyssy Ansgar (LMU München), Kochiras, Hylarie (IAS Bologna),
Sangiacomo, Andrea (U. Groningen), and others.
Organizers: Tzuchien Tho, Stefano Di Bella
We
invite papers addressing these problems of reason and cause based on
historical studies and contemporary problems. We are particularly
interested in papers that are able to connect 17th and 18th century
thinkers with contemporary issues in metaphysics and philosophy of
science. However, papers focusing on these issues contextually based in
the 17th and 18th century are also enthusiastically welcomed.
Presentations are planned to be 45 minutes, leaving 15-20 minutes for discussion.
Please submit an abstract of 500 words, including the title of the presentation, to https://easychair.org/confe
The
papers of the conference will be selectively edited for a volume on the
theme. Deadline: 15 June 2017 (Decisions by 30 June 2017)